Liked this one from Sunnet. Our Pangram specialist doesn't fail to deliver.
ACROSS
1 Staff has right to deny food (6) STARVE {STA{R}VE}
4 Regarding an article by man known for patience at work (2,3,3) ON THE JOB {ON} {THE} {JOB}
10 Jog's about to cheat (3,6) RUN AROUND [DD]
11 Fashionable to help backward state (5) INDIA {IN}{DIA<=}
12 Expenditure's not in travel (5) OUTGO {OUT}{GO}
13 Releases a French card game's pot (9) UNLOOSENS {UN}{LOO}{SENS}
14 Long time ago? Twelve Months. (4,3) YEAR DOT {YEAR}{.}
16 Cry out measure by yards (4) YELL {Y}{ELL}
19 Left some equity (4) QUIT [T]
21 Revolutionary Tamizh accepted university's angle (7) AZIMUTH {AZIM{U}TH*}
24 Writer's AIDS raised stink and a bit of sympathy (9) INKSTANDS {STINK*}{AND}{S
25 Made up of small cushioned footstools (5) POUFS {UP+OF}*{S}
26 Drove auditor's stock (5) HORDE (~hoard)
27 And others following a hairstyle that's proceeding from the base (9) ACROPETAL {A}{CROP}{ETAL}
29 Kind of cell division seen in my large island (6) MYOSIS {MY}{OS}{IS}
DOWN
1 Gemstone strangely adorns a couple of unknowns (8) SARDONYX {ADORNS}*{Y}{X}
5 Acknowledgement by friend at an intersection (7) NODALLY {NOD}{ALLY}
6 The populace of jittery Ohio is holding one referendum (3,6) HOI POLLOI {HO{1} {POLL}OI*}
7 Heard it is badly dug in half of Jeddah (6) JUDGED {J{DUG*}ED
8 Stew a pinch of bread's leaven (6) BRAISE {B}{RAISE}
9 Gold puff befitting a lord (6) AUGUST {AU}{GUST}
15 Spirited Democrat without relative? (9) DAUNTLESS {D}{AUNT LESS}
17 An emperor respected by America (8) AUGUSTUS {AUGUST}{US}
18 Emits a signal in the French card game at first (8) WHISTLES {WHIST}{LES}
20 Train agent on vessel's capacity (7) TONNAGE*
21 Ridiculous rating the root of 11 for example (6) ABSURD {AB}{SURD}
22 Henry moved all the way down from peak octave (6) EIGHTH (-h)EIGHT(+h)H
23 Film about Rugby's inclined trail (3,3) SKI RUN {SKI {RU}N}
GRID
Glad to have done all but a few. I was greatly helped by nice clueing of difficult words and of course by expectation of at least one Pangram!
ReplyDeleteHard new words learned-
ReplyDeleteYear dot, Acropetal, Sardonyx, Acropetal to name a few.
Padmanabhan,
DeleteI dare say when you learned that word the second time, it shouldn't have been new to you!
Maybe. But as I have said my vocabulary is limited due to my absence of English as a subject in my degree course (Of course the 1 year PUC did not help much) One does not get familiar without frequent usage. I am having a late stint with the help of CW.
DeleteNot sure whether Padmanabhan got you, CV.
DeletePaddy, you have one petal too many !
DeleteI get it now. Once learned, they are no longer new!
DeleteBut 'One petal too many'?
Paddy, under the list of 'hard new words,' Acropetal appears twice in your post 9:33. Hence 'one petal too many' !
DeletePity is that I did not notice it even after being pointed out by Kishore. He never misses anything. That was what CV also meant. Sluggish on the offtake- luckily it affected my solving only to a limited extent. Thank you MB.
DeleteFilled in Absurd with the help of Def., but was trying to connect it to India (11 for example) as Sunnet probably expected me to.
ReplyDeleteThe 11 was a decoy :). Here I meant the number 11 , not the clue number 11. It was meant as Col. has taken i.e square root of 11, which is a Surd/Irrational number
DeleteBeen struggling the last 4 days to solve.. It happens sometimes that way. And tomorrow is xChequer ... That will be do or die :)
ReplyDeleteThere is a theme herein ...
ReplyDelete25a reminded me of
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D23hDiSnhWo
2 Bag Nathaniel's jawless fish (8) AGNATHAN [T] Bag on double duty
ReplyDeleteI took 's=has=possesses and hence felt that there was no double duty
I don't agree with that anno.
DeleteWhile I do see what you're getting at, "Bag Nathaniel" doesn't mean anything for it to have something.
Yes, the sentence as a whole does mean something.
I think it is the cryptic grammar does nots eem to work.
On my first reading I thought 'bag' was the hidden ind while also being part of the hidden fodder.
In the surface reading the clue is talking of some person putting a jawless fish belonging to Nathaniel in a bag
DeleteIn the cryptic reading the clue should be read as ['Bag Nathaniel' has jawless fish] leading to agnathan being found inside 'Bag Nathaniel'
Make it 'some persons' to go with bag.
DeleteCV, what wrong with my cryptic parsing of the clue?
DeleteOK, I will try to address this question.
DeleteX's y - this may be taken as a hidden clue, with 's as the hidden signal; 's (i.e., has) as a possessive in surface reading and 's (or is) as the link in wordplay..
Bag Nathaniel's jawless fish = "Bag Nathaniel" has jawless fish = agnathan is in Bag Nathaniel - so far so good.
What I mean is 'Bag Nathaniel" does not mean anything.
Nathaniel's bag - OK
Bag X - this is also OK as we can imagine several bags being classified by assigned letters.
I hope I have not tied myself up in any knot and what I have written here is clear.
I get you now, CV
DeleteBag Nathaniel in cryptic sense has no meaning & is not intended to have a meaning. It just says here is a group of letters that is hiding what you are looking for
DeleteRe 4a, one of my British friends had complained about a colleague, "whenever I ask X about the progress, he tells me that he is on the job. How does he complete his assignments if he is on the job all the time?"
ReplyDelete24 Writer's AIDS raised stink and a bit of sympathy (9) INKSTANDS {STINK*}{AND}{Sympathy} AIDS?
ReplyDeleteWriter's aids = defn (False capitalization)
raised = anagrind
stink = anag fodder
and = Charade component taken as is
a bit of sympathy = s
CV at 1115 am: Whilst constructing a clue, does it not require a sentence to make some sense and meaning or will it suffice that a clue has been constructed and now all of you go figure the answer out? I feel, a bit of wit and humour and sense should be there in the clue itself. I find the appropriate expression for my comment elusive ! I find this missing in some of our THCC compilers, unlike the ones elsewhere ! I' ve not tarred everyone with the same brush. Mark my words "" invariably"" and ""some" which could even mean occasionally or at times !
ReplyDeleteI don't know how others here feel.:
Plenty of learning opportunity on offer. Fell for every ruse that was intended, and perhaps a few which were not, but managed to complete with relatively heavy use of the dictionary. I thought the appearance of 'twins' (AUGUST twice in the answers, 'French card game' twice in the clues) might lead to something, but I don't think there's anything more to it.
ReplyDeleteYour spotting August x2 is a pointer to the theme of this puzzle, as mentioned in my comment at 1049. 22d is also a part of the theme ...
DeleteI was thinking about the 'twins' in particular while solving, but I didn't notice find out the actual theme until I saw the highlighted words in the blog.
DeleteRemember, we are in August at present. Please see my comment at 352 for other words from the theme
DeleteEight
ReplyDelete8th month, octet , eight, Augustus.. I am not able to go beyond that. Let me check again.
Virgo is August- Sept.
Quit India movement. 1d, 3d and 25d are also a part of the theme
DeleteHuh? (That's w.r.t. the down clues mentioned.)
DeleteThey are the gemstone, star sign and flower with links to August.
DeleteOh, okay. I was looking for a connection between them and the Quit India Movement. :D
DeleteI must confess that I did not realise the full theme by myself ;-)
ReplyDeleteRaju
ReplyDeleteI know you would expect me to respond to your Comment. Here goes:
There can be no exception to your statement that a clue sentence or statement must make sense. It just cannot be a direction to put Y in XZ and get XYZ as the answer or add YZ to X and get XYZ or jumble ZXY and get XYZ.
Nor will anyone disagree with your statement that there must be wit and humour in [most of the] clues.
But as far as THC is concerned, I would like any Comment to be clue-specific.
If you think such-and-such clue is poor because it does not make sense, cite it.
I believe that most of the present crop of setters write sensible clues. Brilliant clues I have found in recent crosswords.
There was one setter (I don't mean NJ) long ago and most of his clues made little sense on the lines of XYZ above and there was little wit and no humour in his clues. I agree this is also a general statement but I am talking of a setter from the long past with no access to the clues.
Today I won't say a clue makes little sense without quoting it and analysing it.
CV:
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response. Yes indeed, I was expecting you to ! "What I mean is 'Bag Nathaniel" does not mean anything." I am merely quoting you !! I was responding to your earlier comment on this, as I am not at present in a position to cite specific examples. I will not be fair to any compiler in THCC by citing his example. I of course, as I've always been maintaining , enjoy the work of THCC compilers. They are unique ! I only look for a sense in the clue sentence or phrase or idiom. Some do tend to go overboard, when you have to "justify" the annotation once the answer is seen ! You'll agree, we do solve crosswords for a pleasurable experience and hence, the clues and the answers must have so link. Even in the NIE, crossies, I have observed such bloopers where rhw sentence clues do not read well at all !
I do not wish to ruffle feathers here and that's why you see me less here nowadays !
MY OPINION !
29-A-
ReplyDeleteMyosis is a term used for pupillary contraction [ opposite of Mydriasis]. The usual term for cell division is Mitosis or Meiosis
...and the second look at the given link (29 Across), when clicked says : "Not to be confused with miosis, mitosis, or myositis." :)
DeleteMyosis is an alternate spelling of Miosis (cell division) as per Chambers
Delete